I’ll give '64 to The Beatles, '65 to The Kinks, and '66 to The Stones - after that, things get hazy.
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Isn’t that true of any influential artist or group though? They weren’t just a band of their era, they were a band that helped define the music of their era. So it stands to reason that if we created an alternate timeline where they didn’t show up until the late 90s/early 2000s they would have felt more derivative than groundbreaking.
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Or they could have created music that innovates relative to the ‘90s (or later) music scene. I guess we’d have to imagine a temporally displaced George Martin and Brian Epstein as well, though.
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They did OK when they started out 20 odd years ago.
Oh, sorry, I was thinking of Oasis…
I much prefer the Stones to the Beatles but I bet Faces-era Ronnie Wood and George Harrison would have been awesome together.
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My “temporally displaced influencers” fanfic would team up Leonardo da Vinci with Nikola Tesla.
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Marie Curie on bass?
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Craziest Mothers of Invention cover band ever.
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“Weasels Reinvented My Flesh!”
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There’s a great sci fi story (which I can’t bloody remember the name of nor the compilation’s name) wherein a Beatles superfan goes into cryonic slumber, wakes up hundreds of years later, and cons people into thinking he was John Lennon.
Ah, here tis, “Doing Lennon” by Gregory Benford, published 1975, so it doesn’t take the assassination into account.
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When my kids were small, we had a lot of the Music for Little People CDs to sing along with. “All You Need Is Love” is one where kids are singing Beatles’ songs. It all clicked into place for me: their songs are great for kids. Easy to sing, fun, not very sophisticated, and they don’t realize how much is referencing drugs. The songs even sound better when sung in children’s voices.
Again, I know this is a minority opinion. But I do wonder, if you had people from other parts of the world who had never heard of the Beatles, and therefore didn’t know anything about the adulation, would they appreciate the songs if they heard them for the first time?
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Equally, I don’t think Thomas Edison, were he alive today, would be very successful with marketing wax cylinder phonographs.
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1970
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Purple Haze was a bit earlier than ‘70.
Sometimes I like whiskey: Stones
Sometimes I like weed: Beatles
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Hashtag why not both?
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While the Beatles didn’t do a country album, Ringo did…
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There are youtube channels devoted to that sort of thing. As far as I’ve seen, they have all universally loved the Beatles.
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I’d give '66 to the Velvet Underground, but that’s with the benefit of hindsight.
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In '64-'65 My buddies and I were teaching ourselves how to play guitar and trying to be a rock n roll band
and while we loved the Beatles it was obvious we could sound alot more like the Stones. Plus they had that edge that the parents hated.(not a small thing when you’re 15).
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